


Budgie

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotionally Repressed, Families of Choice, Gen, Good Friend Howie "Chimney" Han, Heart-to-Heart, I'm Bad At Tagging, Introspection, Metaphors, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nicknames, Parenthood, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29977605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Chimney never would have expected that chatting about baby preparations and nicknames would end with him bearing his soul to Buck and confessing his undying love and affection to him, but here they were, leaning shoulder-to-shoulder against the red body of the firetruck, trying to remember what life was like before... everything.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 7
Kudos: 80
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales





	Budgie

Mid-shift, Chimney spied Buck leaning up against the firetruck, his foot braced against the red body of the engine, engrossed with something on his phone. He had a troubled look on his face, his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed, lips mouthing along as he read.

Glancing over, Bobby and Eddie were discussing how difficult their respective children could be at times and Hen was on the phone with Karen at home with the kids, so Chimney took his opportunity to cross the firehouse floor to where Buck was secluded, partially hidden by the bulk of the engine. “Hey.” he greeted when he got close enough. Buck glanced up, surprised, and tucked his phone into his pocket. “What are you doing over here?”

“Oh, reading. Nothing special,” Buck shrugged. He jerked his thumb back to the others, their voices carrying across the house. “I thought you’d be in the middle of that conversation, considering you’re about to be a dad and all.”

“Nah, why rush it? I’ll be in that boat soon enough,” Chimney said as he joined Buck against the firetruck. “But you’re avoiding my question. Are you trying to hide from everyone or what?”

Buck shook his head. “No, uh, nothing like that. I just… didn’t want to be in the way of conversations I have no input in. They want to talk about their kids. Other than looking after Christopher every now and again, I can’t really participate in that way.”

Huffing, Chimney lightly elbowed Buck in the side. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to be an uncle soon. I hope you change your tone before the baby's born. Besides. You do a pretty good job of taking care of Chris. I can only hope you hyper-focus on our kid like that.”

Over the years, Chimney had heard Buck’s little laugh many times, and it never failed to make him smile. “How’s baby Buckley doing anyway? And mama?”

“Both are doing well,” Chimney said, “And that’s baby Han, to you.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. There’s more of us than there are of you, and I don’t think Albert counts,” Buck teased. “You’re outnumbered.”

Snorting, Chimney shoved Buck in the shoulder, and Buck feigned pain. Hen’s voice raised in the background, Bobby laughed at something hilarious Eddie said about Chris. “Laugh it up, jokester. You won’t be laughing when you’re changing dirty diapers,” he jostled Buck again, gentler this time, and gestured to his phone. “But really, what you were looking at? I thought you were going to burst a blood vessel in your neck from how hard you were concentrating.”

“Um,” Buck muttered. Chimney thought that he saw a faint blush spreading across his cheeks. “It’s embarrassing, actually.”

“Come on, man,” Chimney pried. “We’re all friends here. You can tell me. I promise I won’t rub it in your face too much if it’s some adorable childhood photo of baby Buck or something.”

Gulping, Buck ran a hand across the back of his neck as he pulled his phone from his pocket. He put in the passcode and offered it to Chimney, and while Chimney didn’t know the website, he recognised the eerily familiar content. “Baby stuff,” he admitted, scrolling slowly though. “Precautions. What to look out for. I just want to prepare, you know? For babysitting. I want to be sure that I’m doing the right things, and that you and Maddie don’t have to worry about me screwing up when I’m alone with them.”

Though he was very touched, Chimney rolled his eyes. “That’s very kind of you, Buck, but you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself. This is new for all of us, me and Maddie included. Besides, between the three of us, I think you’ve got more experience than us, looking after Chris and all.”

“Nah,” Buck shook his head. “I’ll have to ask the others, but I’m pretty sure looking after an infant is different than looking after an eight-year-old.”

“Probably,” Chimney said. Buck rested his head against the cool metal of the firetruck, shutting his eyes. Chimney watched him. “You’re paranoid, you know. Just a little bit. I mean, baby-proofing our upper cabinets and the window? Our baby isn’t going to pull a spiderman and pull out all our glassware.”

“Who says I did it to protect the baby?” Buck teased, his eyes still closed. “If Maddie wasn’t around to watch you, I’d have you committed to a home. You’re like, a man-baby, or something. You’re too nosey for your own good.”

“Very funny,” Chimney retorted. Buck grinned. “I’m sure I can ask Maddie about a few of your own nosey moments.”

“I could tell you a couple of hers, too,” Buck said. His smile dimmed. It didn’t leave, but it grew smaller, diminished, softer. He stared at the article on his phone before sliding it back into his pocket. “I just can’t wait, you know? It’s silly. It’s not even my kid. But I can’t wait. I’m so happy for you two.”

Chimney lowered his head so Buck couldn’t see his smile. “Thanks. We’re pretty excited too. And you _should_ be happy! Your sister is having a baby- you’re going to be an uncle.”

The small smile on Buck’s face grew wider and brighter, but there was still a faint melancholy behind it. “I’ve already tried to think up nicknames for them.”

“Already?” Chimney asked, incredulous. “You don’t think you should wait until, I don’t know, they’re actually born?”

“Why?” Buck gestured around the room- at Hen and Bobby laughing as they ascended the stairs to the kitchen, Eddie categorizing equipment for the next call. “Our whole lives revolve around nicknames. Buck, Maddie, _Chimney_ , Hen, Eddie, Bobby? It’s all about the nicknames here. It means we’re really family.”

Smiling, Chimney tried not to think too hard about how against nicknames Buck’s parents were when they visited, and decided not to read into it too much. “Well, do you have a top ten? Any favourites?”

“Nah,” Buck glanced down. “It’s stupid.”

Chimney poked him in the side, and Buck squirmed away, trying desperately to avoid his assailing digit. “Come on, tell me. Tell me before I tell Maddie about it and she forces you to tell her. It’s your choice.”

“Not much of a choice,” Buck muttered, but he was smiling. “I can’t keep calling them Buckley Junior forever, right? Maybe Kitten? Snake Eyes? Rockstar?”

“You were right,” Chimney dead-panned, unimpressed. “Those are stupid.”

Hurt, Buck made a sound of anguish as he turned to face Chimney. “That’s not fair. You’re the one who wanted to hear them.”

“Sure, but I didn’t think they would be that bad,” Chimeny gestured vaguely. “Snakey Eyes? Rockstar? Do you have any that aren’t embarrassingly stupid?”

“You’re too harsh. I thought they were cool and kooky,” Buck pouted as he pulled his phone from his pocket again and scrolled through his notes app, reading from a very long list. “How about… Bitsy? Munchkin? Cowboy? Chickie? Baby-kins?”

Groaning, Chimney thumped his head against the engine. “Holy crap, Buck, those are even worse.”

Ignoring him, Buck continued to read through his notes. “Budgie?”

“Budgie?” Chimney tilted his head. “Like, the bird?”

“Yeah,” Buck shrugged. “I like it. It’s cute. I've always thought... I don't know. Finding your footing, being free, flying far away without the urge to look back. Isn't that what everyone wants? To find their own place in this strange world? That's what Budgie means to me. I just think that bird names mean freedom.”

“Freedom?” Chimney rose an eyebrow. “How?”

Shrugging, Buck glanced away, down at his old boots scuffing up the concrete. “I don’t know. Sprouting wings, flying far away. Getting to be free.”

“Being free, huh? I like it. Sounds delicate,” Chimney appraised Buck with clear eyes, noting the way he bit at his lower lip, tilted his head down and away so Chimney couldn’t see his expression, the way he was kicking at the ground. “You ever think about running away?”

He tried not to look at the expression on Buck's face and stared disinterestedly at the far wall. "I mean, yeah," Buck shrugged. "Haven't we all? That’s why we're here, right? Sure, I went on a tour around the country and it took me a little while to figure out what ‘home’ meant to me, but I’m here now. I don’t think I’m going anywhere without a fight. We’ve all found a place where we belong, but I think we were all running around like headless chickens for a while before that.”

Nodding, Chimney rocked back and forth on the balls on his feet. Buck’s words rang with truth, and Chimney understood every word. “I guess we’ve all been looking for our own little bit of freedom.”

Eagerly, Buck gestured as if Chimney had hit the nail on the head. “Yeah,” he agreed. gesturing around at the bustling firehouse. “This place is my freedom, you know? I’ve been running around looking for something that made me feel this way, and nothing has ever come close to this. No job, no hobby, no relationship. Nothing has made me feel as free as working here has.”

He was almost bouncing as he spoke. In the background, Eddie threw his head back and laughed at one of Bobby’s bad jokes, and Hen shook her head with that small smile on her face. Chimney couldn’t help but smile at Buck’s eagerness. “Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Chimney placed a hand on Buck’s shoulder, both to comfort and to still him. A sudden thought came to him. “How are you holding up, by the way? A lot has gone on lately, and we haven’t really had much time to catch up.”

An expression morphed across Buck’s face that Chimney couldn’t identify. “Yeah, I’m doing great. Nothing like being trapped in a burning building to cheer you up.”

Still, Chimney didn’t take his hand off of Buck’s shoulder. “You know what I’m talking about, though.”

Buck’s expression fell, his smile slipping from his face like raindrops on a window. “Yeah, Chim,” he said faintly. “I’m fine.”

But while Chimney knew that Buck’s words were genuine, there was still an undertone of something else there, something quiet and unspoken but just as genuine as his quick dismissal. He spared a moment to look closer at Buck, really truly look at him. He looked tired, but no more so than he usually did after consecutive days of long, never-ending shifts. Loose strands of hair curled across his forehead, slick with sweat on such a sweltering day. His face looked peaceful if not a little uncomfortable at the scrutiny and topic of conversation, but there was something else shifting beneath the surface, something fractured and sharp, like broken glass.

It was something that Chimney had noticed for a while, simmering just under the surface, but he really began to see it when his parents came to visit. Sitting beside Maddie in that suffocating room as Buck was forced to his feet in his anger as he spat heart-felt accusations at his shell-shocked parents as they watched with teary eyes. Chimney had always seen it, but that’s when he really began to see the cracks become fissures in the impenetrable ice that surrounded Buck’s deeply hidden emotions. And while Buck would never admit it, and while nobody would ever bring it up to him, Chimney saw it, buried deep down.

Sometimes, Chimney forgot how young Buck was, especially compared to the rest of the team. He was so boisterous and so cantankerous but wise beyond his years and showed more empathy than many of the people Chimney had met throughout his life. But he also knew that Buck had gone through as much as the rest of them, despite being so much younger. Sometimes, he looked at Buck after a long shift, covered in sweat and ash and dust, and keenly recalled the sound of him screaming as they tried in vain to pull him out from under the crushing weight of the engine. Sometimes, after a long shift, he could see the way Buck limped, carried his weight differently on that leg, despite how easily and convincingly he hid it. 

There was a quiet kind of sadness that Buck learned long ago to bury deep down inside himself, hidden by layers of playfulness and impulsiveness and recklessness and kindness, bits and pieces he had found along his way to this moment right now and carried with him like a shield. He had seen it, flashes of it that darted through his eyes before he could hide it, but he had never seen it as palpably as that week his parents came to visit. It was raw, every breath like an exposed nerve. Chimney knew that he wasn’t the only member of the 118 who had noticed and wanted to wrap Buck in bubble wrap and hide him away behind a wall made from their very own bodies, a barricade made from the brick and mortar of the 118. But Buck wouldn’t appreciate that. Would vehemently reject it, and would never dare to show them that part of him again. So they stood back, and they watched from a distance, and they watched as that burning bonfire of anger slowly simmered down to an ever-flowing ember, one that they hardly knew was there before that day, hidden so well. 

It’s no secret that Bobby thought of Buck as a son, but Chimney had long ago decided that Buck was like an annoying little brother to him. It wasn’t too hard a thought- Buck was the youngest member of the team and you could tell most of the time, from his half-hearted complaints and his light teasing and the way he tentatively asked for advice in that dismissive way of his. Chimney did have a younger brother, one who he had known less time than he had known Buck, and the feeling was the same. He would die for him, and he wasn’t sure what his life would be like without Buck always in it. He wouldn’t know how to survive without Buck’s constant chatter in his ear as they ride in the engine towards calls, wouldn’t know how to cope with the phantom limb pain of Buck no longer being by his side, wouldn’t know how to keep up with Buck’s continuous flow of energy. He just wouldn’t know. He had hardly coped when Buck was on light duties after the accident, none of them had. And seeing Buck with his parents, nearly dying in that fire after sacrificing everything to save that victim, after watching him fall apart at the seams and stitch himself back together again with tattered and withered strands so he could keep going, he realised with a painful pang of recognition that Buck probably had no idea just how much he meant to him. 

Looking at him now, bone-tired and worn out and carrying an ache that Chimney couldn’t even begin to identify, basking in the warm sunlight that reached its fingers inside the firehouse, peaceful and calm within the tiny moments of running towards calls at full speed, putting all thoughts of anything else behind, Chimney couldn’t bear to let that stand for another moment longer. 

“Hey,” Chimney broke the silence they had fallen into and gently nudged Buck in the side. Buck blinked and turned from the sun to face him. “You know that you’re like a little brother to me, right? I may not be part of the Buckley clan yet, but you really are like family to me. I just want you to know that.”

Buck looked like he’d been punched and all the air had left his lungs in a vacuum. He looked floored, and Chimney spared a thought for perhaps coming across this another way, but it was too late now. Buck blinked at him, dumbly. “Uh,” he gulped. “Thanks, Chim. That’s… that’s very kind of you.”

“It’s not kind, it’s the truth,” Chimney said simply. “I couldn’t imagine my life without you in it, and you’re like the annoying little brother I never had.”

“I don’t know,” Buck tried to joke, but he still looked like he’d been slapped. “I live with Albert, and he’s pretty darn annoying.”

“That’s fair,” Chimney had to chuckle. Buck’s attempts at disarming situations like this was almost always effective, and this was one of those times. He glanced at him- he looked uncomfortable, shuffling awkwardly, and he knew that Buck was going to find some reason to leave soon. He wanted to get it out before Buck did, though. “But you’re like family to me. You always have been. I’m glad that you’re in my life, and I can’t wait for our kid to meet you so you can be to them what you’ve always been to me, even if you are pretty terrible at coming up with nicknames.”

That last comment was tacked on to the end as an added sense of levity to an otherwise heavy statement when Chimney worried that Buck’s legs were going to give from under him. His eyes were shiny, stinging with unshed tears, and his lips were parted in shock and awe. He stared at Chimney as if he had never seen him before, and Chimney suddenly realized how unnerving this kind of scrutiny was.

Buck swallowed once, twice, voice thick and throat clogged with emotion. “O-oh-.”

His words were cut off by the all-too-familiar whine of the siren, and Bobby shouted at the team on shift to roll out, and everyone rushed to their stations, dressing in their turnout gear and leaping into their places on the rigs. A look of pure relief shattered the fragile expression on Buck’s face, and he clapped Chimney on the shoulder as he darted towards the rig, where Eddie was already ushering him on and Hen was shouting at Chimney something about keeping them waiting. He wondered what kind of call they were being sent to. He wondered if Maddie was the one who called it in. “See you there,” Buck’s voice was light, but Chimney heard the undertone of doubt and uncertainty that he tried to mask with his usual good humour. He wondered, not for the first time, how often he had done that.

“Saved by the bell,” Chimney called as he chased after him. “Don’t think this conversation is over, Buckley! If I don’t have it with you, your sister will!”

It was a half-hearted threat and they both knew it. They climbed into the truck beside Hen and Eddie, and they were driving away from the firehouse before their doors were even shut. Buck’s smile was just as radiant and true as always, but when Chimney looked at him, teasing the rest of the team through the headsets, he still saw the fractured pieces of the hurt child who just wanted his parents to love him, who had been through too much in a short amount of time, who wore his heart on his sleeve but kept his cards to his chest but sitting here in the back of the truck, his head thrown back in laughter, it was easy to forget all of that and just be _here_ , here and now, in this perfect sunlit moment. 

“I wouldn’t be talking, Buckaroo,” Chimney pitched in. “Did you guys know that he came up with nicknames for our kid, and one of them was Snake Eyes? And Rockstar? And Munchkin? And a whole list of other terrible names?”

“Hey!” Buck protested in more of a whine. “That’s not fair. I thought we agreed that Budgie was good!”

“It’s the best of the bunch,” Chimney agreed.”But don't forget that all of those bad ones came first!”

“Traitor,” Buck pouted, and as they rounded the corner towards their call, Chimney couldn’t help but laugh, the heart-felt conversation left behind them back at the firehouse.


End file.
